


Tell Me Something That'll Save Me

by nonisland



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post Season/Series 03, Rarewomen Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camelot breaks kings’ daughters and spits out their bones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me Something That'll Save Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/gifts).



> **contains:** mind control (in the form of Vivian's spell and the long-term results from it); references to the s3 finale and its effects on Morgause and Morgana; brief allusions to food/eating issues
> 
> Title from Lady Gaga’s “Teeth”, because once you have a theme that works for you why change it. Many, many thanks to the incomparable [**Nell**](http://lady-ragnell.livejournal.com/), who continues to rescue me from my own carelessness; any errors or other problems remaining are, of course, entirely my own fault.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Should you find something, whilst reading one of my stories, that offends you/is incorrect/could offend others/is in any way problematic, please please _please_ do not hesitate to tell me. I will never spew hate at you, I will never attack you, and I will _always_ thank you for taking the time to let me know.

Not that Vivian counts, but it has been nearly a year and a half since she saw _him_.

(This is a lie. Vivian counts. Vivian wakes up in the mornings from dreams so sweet the loss cuts her straight through, and goes to bed at night worn thinner with each day of separation. _You were the most beautiful girl in the land_ , her father tells her fretfully, as if telling it over and over will make it so again.

She was: everyone always told her that. But that hadn’t been enough for Arthur of Camelot, had it.)

She did her embroidery (or tried, but finished nothing, always gazing out the window towards Camelot, her needle idle in her hands); she listened to minstrels (or tried, but had no attention for the songs of war and broke down sobbing at every song of love); she attended tournaments (or tried, but she had seen Arthur fight in one, once, and no other champion is his equal).

Finally they all admitted she had gone a little mad.

Vivian accepts this. You cannot want as badly as she wants and not be mad, she thinks. You cannot be hollowed out by magic and remain whole.

And it must be magic, because she _remembers_ the time before _him_. Fool that she was to not have recognized his splendor at once, she didn’t—she disliked him, even, somehow.

She may be mad but she is not stupid. (That, at least, is not a lie.)

So now, with the spring sunset glittering on the last of winter’s snow, Vivian adds another day to the tally she does not keep, _will_ not keep, because mad or not she is still a princess, and princesses must live up to standards.

(Five hundred twenty-seven days.)

Her maid—she still has a maid, though she no longer has ladies-in-waiting, no longer being obligated to attend any events that might require them—unfastens her gown and brushes her hair out. Vivian once loved being groomed, the slow luxury of being washed and brushed, perfumed and soothed. Now she endures it because it is done for her.

Even after a hundred strokes her hair is no longer golden. It was, once. A visiting poet compared it to the sunlight gleaming off a crown, and she had known his speech was true. It is the color of winter grass now, falling sere and uncurled over her shoulders.

Vivian allows herself to be put into a nightdress, and put to bed. The world goes dark.

She dreams—of course she dreams. She always does. If she didn’t dream waking would not be so cruel, and it seems the world wants to be as cruel as possible. If she could she would stay dreaming forever, if she can’t have _him_ , but she refuses to admit, even to herself, that she can’t. Vivian is a princess, the only child of a king. She would bring him a _kingdom_ if he would only come to his senses and choose her. Is even _that_ not enough?

(A kingdom _must_ be enough of a dowry to persuade any man to take Vivian. What it says about her if that isn’t true—no.)

This time, though, she wakes in the middle of the night, the full moon shining sweet and brilliant across her bed. Her maid is snoring softly.

Of course she didn’t try anything all winter. She didn’t want to freeze to death on her way. But it’s nearly spring now, and her maid must be very tired to be sleeping so well, and the sound will hide any small noises Vivian herself might make...

And the door is unlocked. They must have forgotten. She _won’t_ risk everything by not taking this chance now.

Somehow she creeps through the castle halls without meeting anyone except one guard, the length of a hall away, who thinks her a ghost. She can hear him shouting and cursing and calling on gods old and new to save him, and hurries away before anyone else can come and see her, and maybe remember, as he somehow forgot, that there is a living ghost inside these walls too.

The stables, too, are somehow empty. Vivian unfolds her cloak from over her arm, slips it on, and mounts her father’s best hunting horse.

She knows the way to Camelot, of course. She’s never made it further than the town wall before now, but on a white horse in a white gown, her pale hair streaming and her silver-blue cloak flying behind, in the moonlight and the snow—maybe nobody will see her, or maybe they’ll think she’s a ghost here as well.

She puts her heels to the horse’s flanks and they’re off, arrowing through the night.

By the time she reaches the forest she thinks the only thing keeping her from freezing to death is the solid warmth of the horse beneath her. Her legs are raw and the muscles beneath aching, but at least the fierce tearing pain of the first time she’d done this will never recur.

(She’d gone into another fit of weeping when she realized what she had done. “He’ll never know that I waited for him!” she’d wailed into the pillow she held over her face as her maid wiped the blood from her thighs. Of course ladies always rode sidesaddle for a reason, but she hadn’t had _time_ for that, it had been too important to get back to Arthur...)

But it is _so_ dark under the trees, and _so_ cold with no sun, and Vivian is afraid now that she’ll die in the woods and be eaten by wolves. Do they have wolves in this part of the land? Well, eaten by _something_ , anyway. And nobody will even know where to find her, and maybe they won’t even know that she’s died—

There’s a light in the distance, coming towards her.

 _Robbers_ , Vivian thinks, panicked. Her horse is good, and her clothes are good, and what if they don’t believe she has no money, or— No, the light is cold, blue-white like the moonlight, not anything from torch or lamp. Her panic sharpens, and the horse moves uneasily under her. _What if it’s fairies?_ She knows that the only girls who gain from meeting fairies in the woods are commoners, poor and hopeless. Princesses like Vivian are much more likely to be stolen, or possibly eaten, she can’t remember.

She is still frozen in indecision when the light reaches her. It’s held in the outstretched palm of a woman who might be Vivian’s own age, dark-haired and beautiful and somehow familiar-looking.

“My sister said there was someone here, and I thought she _must_ be mistaken, she couldn’t possibly be well en— But here you are.” There’s an odd relief in the strange woman’s tone, and her voice is even more familiar than her face. Something about her is more intensely real than anyone or anything Vivian has seen since _him_ , except that awkward dark-haired manservant of his and—

“ _Lady Morgana_?” Vivian blurts.

Morgana jerks slightly, and her face closes off, siege-ready. "Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m Vivian, Lady of Deira.” She isn’t _that_ easy to forget! “What are you doing out here in the woods?”

“What are _you_ doing out here in the woods?” Morgana is frowning now, which is at least less frightening than the furious wariness she’d greeted Vivian’s recognition of her with.

“Trying to get to Camelot, of course,” Vivian says.

Morgana’s eyes widen. She looks at Vivian again, a quick sharp survey that leaves Vivian feeling stripped bare, and anger washes through her face. “You must be frozen,” she says. “Did you ride here all the way from your father’s home?”

Vivian nods.

“You can’t stay here, your father’s one of Camelot’s allies and if he finds us—but come back for now. I can’t send you back like that and I need time to prepare the release anyway.”

There is a conversation Morgana is having with someone who isn’t Vivian, clearly. “What?”

“I’m going to free you from the spell,” Morgana says. There’s fury burning in her eyes.

Vivian had known it was magic, she _had_ , but somehow hearing it in such icy-sure tones from someone else undoes her. She bursts into tears again, raw and messy. She never used to be ugly when she cried, before, but she knows she is now. Things are unknotting inside her, thawing, blooming. It _is_ magic. And if it’s magic someone can fix it, if not Lady Morgana then someone else. She’ll be able to think about herself again. She’ll be able to have a _life_ again.

“This way,” Morgana says, and then, rather awkwardly, pats Vivian’s leg. It’s meant as a kind gesture, Vivian can tell, and Morgana had never seemed to her the sort of person who made those—and now she seems even less so, cool and hard and dangerous, living in the middle of _nowhere_ when she’d been a king’s ward!

Vivian snuffles and gulps for air and finally manages to ask, “Why are _you_ here?”

Morgana stops walking. Vivian stops, too, and looks down at her, and then wishes she hadn’t. Rage and pain, leaking around the edges of Morgana’s defenses, make her beautiful face ugly. “Because I am a sorceress, and I was lied to and betrayed and nearly killed for it. They tried to take it away from me. They told me I was mad.”

“Did they tell you to stop leaving your chambers too?” Vivian asks. Her voice is very small in the vast shadows.

Morgana’s light-ball brightens, sparks quivering on her fingertips. “No,” she says. There are worse prisons than silk-filled rooms in her voice.

Vivian had thought she was too cold to shiver any harder, but it seems she’s not.

“My sister saved me,” Morgana says. “And I declared war on them.” She straightens, and her chin comes up, and in that moment Vivian sees an empress uncrowned. “We lost the first battle, but we will not fail again. We’ll have allies, stronger magic—I _will_ destroy Uther Pendragon for what he’s done to his kingdom. His people.” Her mouth twists. “His—never mind.” She starts walking again, and Vivian nudges the horse to follow.

She should be concerned, because King Uther _is_ one of her father’s allies, but—but. It makes _sense_ , what Morgana says.

“Would you like me to kill the man who did this to you, if I find him?” Morgana asks.

Vivian looks at her in alarm.

“It’s no more than your father should have done.” Morgana doesn’t seem to have looked at Vivian, but her tone is soothing, reasonable, as if she’s somehow sensed Vivian’s fright. “But he didn’t. We magic-mad have to stand together if nobody else will make that stand for us, don’t we?”

“I don’t want anyone killed,” Vivian says firmly.

“Tell me again when I get that spell off you,” Morgana says, “and I’ll believe you.”

They’re both silent for the rest of the trip to the little woodsman’s hut where Morgana and her sister have been living. The windows are so tightly-shuttered not even a glint of light creeps out, though there are a few thin silvery threads of smoke rising from the chimney.

Morgana raps a quick pattern at the door. Vivian dismounts and falls, the ground swinging wildly out from under her, as soon as she tries to put weight on her legs. She’s never ridden anywhere near this far before.

It’s not something she _should_ be proud of, but she is. She did this. She’s made it all the way here and soon she’ll stop missing _him_ like he’s been cut out of her chest and everything will be all right again and _she did this_ , herself, alone. Well. Nearly alone. Practically as good as alone, anyway.

Morgana helps Vivian off the ground and half-carries her to the door of the house. There’s hard muscle under Morgana’s loose robe; she’s obviously been _working_. And not eating enough, or maybe just not having proper meats and wine and sweets and all the delicacies so necessary to court life. Vivian imagines she can see the two of them, gaunt and ghostly, moving slowly towards shelter.

“Will you look kindly on my Camelot when you’re queen in Deira?” Morgana asks.

“I don’t see why not,” Vivian says blankly, too sore and exhausted and soul-sick to fuss or delay.

When they get inside Morgana pushes Vivian unceremoniously into the only chair in the single room. There’s a bed, with a woman with a horribly scarred face half-covered by the tangle of her blond hair lying on it. Other than that and a little table by the hearth there’s no furniture at all. Vivian can’t imagine going from a castle to _this_.

“You were right,” Morgana says to the scarred woman. Her voice is softer than Vivian’s ever heard it, warm, delighted. “She was just where you said she’d be.”

A smile lifts the smooth side of the woman’s face, and she lies back on her pillow. “Take care of her,” she says to the ceiling, her voice already fading into sleep.

Vivian is trying not to stare, because she _knows_ it’s rude, even she knows that, and right now it’s much more important to remain in Morgana’s good graces than it is to do whatever she wants. But years and years of exercising her royal right against anyone losing their own sense of what she deserves has left her with very little self-discipline.

(This, also, is a lie, in a way. Other than Arthur there is nothing she’s fought for in years, because princesses, she knows, do not fight.)

“Camelot did that to her,” Morgana says at Vivian’s ear, and Vivian flinches. “I’ll hurt them for that, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Vivian hears herself saying, half-terrified. _Don’t hurt me_ , she means. _Don’t change your mind about saving me._ But she’s allowed to say it, because this is a loss, and even a princess can say she’s sorry for a loss. Even a queen.

“Look at me,” Morgana says, coming around to stand in front of her. Vivian does. Morgana’s eyes are golden, hypnotic. She speaks a language veiled with age and secrets, asking and then ordering, pleading and then threatening.

Vivian can’t breathe. Morgana’s spell is choking her, squeezing all the air out of her from her toes to her throat, and her vision is blurring, she is going to die here, it was all a trick, Morgana didn’t feel sorry for her, or Morgana didn’t want her alliance, or Morgana is a fairy after all come to kill her. Her vision blurs and then shatters, the room blazing gold around her as the coils release and she falls, weightless, and settles back into her body as they land on the floor at Morgana’s feet.

The floor is dusty and there’s a splinter poking her cheek and she hasn’t properly been to a ball in almost a year and a _half_ and her hair is a _mess_ and she doesn’t even want to _think_ about her figure and she’s so sick of gruel and broth that she’s going to throw the next bowl someone tries to serve her _right back_ at them and she has never, ever been so happy in her _life_.

She doesn’t miss Arthur Pendragon in the _least_ , the insufferable brat.

Morgana holds out a hand, and Vivian takes it, wincing a little at the harshness of Morgana’s skin, but only inwardly. She sways, and drops back into the chair.

“Do you want him dead now?” Morgana asks.

Vivian thinks about it, really and truly she does, but she just can’t. “No. But—but thank you. And _thank you_ , I don’t even know...” The words are alien in her mouth, strange but necessary. She’s never felt gratitude like this, never needed to. “You have a friend in me, Morgana of Camelot,” she says, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I have done mercilessly awful things to geography in assuming the Five Kingdoms were some subdivision of Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, and since when I am endeavoring to be ~~historically accurate~~ more precise in my historical inaccuracy I tend to deposit _Merlin_ in the early sixth century, at which time (so Wikipedia tells me) Northumbria was two different kingdoms—Bernicia and Deira—I have assumed that they and the other three are the Five Kingdoms in question, and that Camelot is actually roughly in the middle (where Mercia was) instead of clear off to one corner.
> 
> I am also disregarding nearly all the canonical geography because it makes less than no sense.
> 
> King Olaf would most logically be from someplace in the northeast, and I picked Deira a) because it was going to be easier to remember how to spell, b) in the interests of being at least slightly less geographically implausible, c) because a Deira _has_ actually been mentioned in-show, and d) because I am irresistibly fond of York, historically. (Let’s all please agree to ignore the fact that there is also an Earl of Northumbria in the show itself.)


End file.
